Brad Kostreva

About Brad Kostreva

Always moving forward; a philosophy for my professional and personal lives, this has helped shape my belief system and approach to my career. I lead enterprise cloud platform engineering at Northwestern Mutual, focused on building secure, resilient, and governable platforms that support both traditional workloads and emerging AI capabilities in a highly regulated environment.My primary mandate is cloud foundations: identity, networking, platform reliability, operational guardrails, and compliance-by-design. From that foundation, I enable AI platforms as a natural extension—not a separate track—ensuring generative AI capabilities inherit the same controls, observability, and accountability expected of core enterprise infrastructure.A significant portion of my work is spent translating regulatory, risk, and governance requirements into repeatable platform patterns. That includes defining access controls, auditability, logging, reliability metrics, and human‑in‑the‑loop safeguards that allow teams to move quickly without re-litigating compliance or security on every initiative.I partner closely with cybersecurity, enterprise architecture, legal, and product leaders to ensure cloud and AI platforms are treated as long‑lived enterprise assets—measurable, supportable, and defensible under scrutiny. My leadership philosophy centers on building durable systems, growing capable teams, and creating clarity where ambiguity would otherwise slow progress.I’m most energized by roles where platform engineering is viewed as strategic leverage, where governance enables speed rather than restricting it, and where AI capabilities are introduced deliberately, responsibly, and at scale. No singular person can succeed without the team(s) that they work with and for, and on teams I lead, every member should know that they’ll never walk alone in the challenges they face, and my philosophy is strongly tied to this mindset. Feel free to follow me @TheBradK on \"X\"(Twitter)

Experience

1. Assistant Director - Cloud Foundations and Platforms a i Engineering

   Northwestern Mutual

   Jul 2022 — Present · Milwaukee, WI, US

   Own enterprise cloud platform execution of strategy spanning identity, networking, reliability, security controls, and compliance requirements in a highly regulated financial services environment.Designed and scaled cloud platform guardrails that embed security, auditability, and operational standards directly into delivery workflows, reducing ad‑hoc risk reviews and accelerating time‑to‑delivery.Established platform patterns that enable generative AI capabilities—assistant orchestration, RAG, and automation—while inheriting existing cloud governance, access controls, and monitoring expectations.Partner with cybersecurity, enterprise architecture, and legal stakeholders to translate regulatory and policy requirements into enforceable technical controls rather than manual process.Lead and grow platform engineering teams responsible for long‑lived infrastructure, emphasizing operational excellence, clear ownership, and systems thinking over short‑term delivery.Serve as a technical and strategic advisor to product and engineering leaders on when platform centralization is required versus when autonomy is appropriate.

Education

• University of Wisconsin-Parkside

  Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), Drama and Dramatics/Theatre Arts, General

  1997 — 2002

Skills

• Edi
• Team Leadership
• Information Technology
• Vmware
• Process Improvement
• Cross-Functional Team Leadership
• Project Management
• Sap Products
• IT Strategy
• Cloud Computing
• Sharepoint
• Business Process Improvement
• Project Planning
• Cisco Technologies
• IT Management
• Visio
• Vendor Management
• Management
• IT Service Management
• Sap
• Change Management
• Networking
• Itil
• Business Analysis
• Business Intelligence
• Disaster Recovery